An international team of astronomers has discovered a new warm Jupiter exoplanet orbiting a distant G-type star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-4515 b, is similar in size to Jupiter but about two times more massive ...
Scientists have long puzzled over why all of the planets in Earth's solar system have slightly slanted orbits around the sun. But a new, Yale-led study suggests this phenomenon may not be so unusual after all. Even in "pristine" ...
Astronomy
Nov 28, 2023
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Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered two new "hot Jupiter" exoplanets. The newfound alien worlds, designated TOI-4377 b and TOI-4551 b, both orbit ...
The James Webb Space Telescope observed the exoplanet WASP-80 b as it passed in front of and behind its host star, revealing spectra indicative of an atmosphere containing methane gas and water vapor. While water vapor has ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 22, 2023
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On 17 November 2023, ESA's Juice spacecraft carried out one of the largest and most important maneuvers in its eight-year journey to Jupiter.
Space Exploration
Nov 20, 2023
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A team of astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with several institutions in China, working with one colleague from Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi, in Italy, and another from the University of Utah, in the U.S., has found ...
To explore the mysterious ice-encrusted moon Europa, the mission will need to endure bombardment by radiation and high-energy particles surrounding Jupiter.
Astronomy
Oct 24, 2023
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Jupiter's ocean moons capture most of our attention because of their potential habitability. But Io, Jupiter's bad-boy volcanic moon, is in a class of its own. There's nothing else like it in the solar system, and NASA's ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 20, 2023
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Jupiter has some of the most conspicuous atmospheric features in our solar system. The planet's Great Red Spot, large enough to envelop Earth, is nearly as well known as some of the various rivers and mountains on the planet ...
Astronomy
Oct 19, 2023
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As we began to discover hundreds, then thousands of exoplanets, we found that there were two types of worlds unlike anything in our solar system. The first are super-Earths. These worlds straddle the line between large rocky ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 5, 2023
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5
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass slightly less than one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times more massive than all of the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian planets.
The planet was known by astronomers of ancient times and was associated with the mythology and religious beliefs of many cultures. The Romans named the planet after the Roman god Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can reach an apparent magnitude of −2.8, making it on average the third-brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus. (Mars can briefly exceed Jupiter's brightness at certain points in its orbit.)
Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium; it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements. Because of its rapid rotation, Jupiter's shape is that of an oblate spheroid (it possesses a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator). The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries. A prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding the planet is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere. There are also at least 63 moons, including the four large moons called the Galilean moons that were first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these moons, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury.
Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions and later by the Galileo orbiter. The most recent probe to visit Jupiter was the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft in late February 2007. The probe used the gravity from Jupiter to increase its speed and adjust its trajectory toward Pluto, thereby saving years of travel. Future targets for exploration in the Jovian system include the possible ice-covered liquid ocean on the moon Europa.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
